Always
by Calvi-sama
Summary: A man's thoughts are rarely simple, particularly Cid's, and especially when they pertain to Vincent. Suggested yaoi, rated M for language


**Title: Always  
Author: **Calvi_sama**  
****Pairing:** Cid x Vincent  
**Rating:** R (for language)  
**Disclaimer:** I do not in any way own, nor profit from, the characters and/or locations of FFVII, that would all be Square Enix.  
**Warnings:** None, other than language (for once).

* * *

Cid woke up with a start, his first breath of the morning a gasp as he blinked his eyes into focus. With a rustle of sheets he looked over his shoulder and noticed the bed beside him was empty again, with only a head-shaped dent in the pillow to betray that it had even been slept in at all. Sitting up with a muffled curse, Cid swung his legs over the edge of the bed and just sat there, back hunched over as he stared at the wall.

Vincent had disappeared again. He _hated_ it when Vincent disappeared, but at least he had gotten better at handling it, though he remained a far cry from 'getting used to it'.

After a couple of minutes that felt like hours crept by he reached over to his nightstand and picked up his pack of cigarettes. With a jerk, he tossed the end of one up and with practiced ease turned into automatic and unconscious movement, captured the end in his lips and tossed the pack haphazardly back onto the nightstand. He didn't light it, though. Vincent always hated it when he smoked in the bedroom.

The call of nature got Cid up and moving, drifting into the bathroom after another glance at the empty bed; covers pulled up and tucked in neatly, hospital corners at the foot, comforter turned down and nightstand carefully arranged. Cigarette dangling from his lips, he stood at the toilet and emptied his bladder then wandered over to the sink to wash his hands. Vincent always hated it when he neglected proper hygiene.

Looking in the mirror, Cid just stared at his reflection, eyes far off and not really seeing the blond hair that stuck out in every direction imaginable, the dark circles under his eyes and the noticeable slump to his shoulders. With a sigh, he reached up and rubbed his face hard, careful to avoid his cigarette. It always pissed him off when he accidently broke them with such a movement. Glancing down he noticed a book of matches on the counter by the sink, no doubt left there from the last time he had emptied his pockets before stripping for a shower. Sliding them off of the counter and into his hand, he silently wandered back towards the bedroom, stopping to lean in the door frame and stare at the bed again.

_Fuck it_, he thought and opened the book of matches, tearing off one of the remaining two. With a pop and a hiss the match caught, producing a bright flare of orange and he lit his cigarette, shaking the match out as he took a drag. Holding the smoke in his lungs, he peeked around the corner, located the trash bin, and flicked the dead match into it. He would explain to Vincent later why the room smelled of smoke. Bringing his gaze back into the bedroom he pinched the cigarette between the first two fingers of his right hand and exhaled the blue-gray smoke in a long, thin cloud. Cid watched it disperse slowly and felt his heart break a little bit more.

Bringing the cigarette back to his lips he took another drag, this time exhaling the sharp smoke through his nose in twin jets, making him resemble a bull about to charge. At least that's what Vincent liked to tease him with. It always made him laugh when Vincent teased him like that because it made the ex-Turk happy; lit up his eyes in a way that reminded Cid of the bright coals of a fire and he loved that color. Because of _Vincent_ he loved that color.

Fuck, but he hated it when Vincent disappeared. It always felt like a part of him was missing and it made him twitchy and irritable. Cid wandered over to the bed and gently ran his fingers over Vincent's pillow. There was a long black hair stuck on the white material and he plucked it off, bringing it up to his eyes. He loved Vincent's hair, though he'd never admit it. He wasn't prissy like that, fussing over grooming and style if his own head of spikes were any indication. But he did love Vincent's hair, so thick and black, just perfect for fisting his hands in, or burrowing his nose into. Vincent always smelled so good, clean and spicy and male. A corner of Cid's lips quirked up briefly as he pictured Vincent rolling his eyes when Cid would come up behind him and squash his face into the back of Vincent's head and just stand there, sniffing.

As his smile disappeared he brushed his fingers together, dropping that memory-inducing hair to drift onto the floor. He'd clean it up later. Crossing over to his closet, he got dressed automatically; grabbing a pair of wadded up cargo pants that he had worn the day before and pulling them on over his ripped boxers. He got a clean shirt, though, because Vincent had always hated it when he wore dirty shirts. He tied his work flannel around his waist and dug out a clean pair of socks. Cid hated wearing dirty socks, and yet he didn't own a pair that didn't have at least one hole in them. The last thing he grabbed after putting on his flight goggles to hold his unruly hair back and out of his face were his dog tags. He never went anywhere without them. He felt naked without them.

Cid walked right past the kitchen, not even stopping for tea. When Vincent left he never had an appetite and his tea tasted like water. He stepped out onto the porch and put on his muddy combat boots. He never wore them inside anymore as Vincent always hated it when he tracked mud inside. Cid had always thought Vincent was too strict with the rules, but he always felt bad when he didn't adhere to them because he couldn't stand the disappointed look in Vincent's eyes, though the gunman never said a word. Cid hated that look.

As he tromped through the yard towards the hangar where the _Bronco II_ was at rest, smoking as he went, he thought it was funny that he had been so tamed by one person. He remembered hearing about just such a thing from the married members of his crew and he had always laughed at them for being pussy-whipped. Well, he wasn't laughing now. He thought it funny that all the inconvenient things that Vincent asked but never asked him to do no longer seemed inconvenient at all, but made perfect sense… and made him happy. All the compromises that they made for each other, each being one half of the other with their little idiosyncrasies and particulars, together somehow making a perfect whole. A home. A life.

Cid walked into the hangar and just stood there looking around at the unfinished projects he had going. He couldn't bring himself to work on anything. Vincent wasn't here and with the man absent, so too was his desire to be productive. He let out a small burst of curses and kicked an empty barrel, the sound reverberating though the hangar with startling volume, fading away with a cavernous ring as his eyes swung over to the _Bronco II._

He knew where Vincent had gone, hell, Vincent had _told_ him. The man had just never told him _why_, his eyes just growing sad and when Cid had persisted in asking him the gunman had stayed resolutely silent. Cid knew better than to keep trying. Vincent was a stubborn son-of-a-bitch, and Cid would let him keep his secrets even while he quietly fumed at Vincent's reluctance –or maybe his inability- to share what was so important with the one person he trusted the most. And try as he might, Cid just couldn't understand why Vincent stayed so quiet, and he couldn't bear the thought that he was still only second in Vincent's heart. It made him grind his teeth and want to hit something, and then once that feeling passed, he always felt empty and –damn him to hell- the accompanying despair made him question _why_ he even bothered loving Vincent in the first place if he was only ever going to be a sick kind of rebound. He knew better than that though, and he never failed to kick his own ass for thinking that way, because he _knew_ Vincent loved him, _knew_ that the only way Vincent loved was with everything that he had, which only made this situation worse.

That seemed to make up his mind for him though. Hitching up his pants after first flicking his cigarette out into the mud to join its pack-mates on the pitted and trampled surface, he stalked over to his workbench, grabbed the key to the _Bronco II_ and jogged over to the small plane. Cid climbed the fuselage with practiced ease, settled into the twin-seater and started her up. He always loved hearing her engine roar to life, and the whirring, growling spin of the twin props on either wing, and for a brief moment Vincent was forgotten, abandoned for Cid's first love and the anticipation of eminent flight.

But Vincent never stayed gone, oh no, and as soon as the hitching vibration of the engine became a steady purr under Cid's backside, the gunman's face came back to him with a single-minded and determined clarity. Cid put the biplane into forward, easing off the breaks to taxi out into the spacious yard and over to the small landing strip that was behind their house.

He always gave Vincent his privacy, but not today. Cid _needed_ answers before the crack in his heart caused the damned thing to break apart once and for all. That would kill him, and he didn't want to leave Vincent even though that crack had Vincent's name written all over it.

As the _Bronco II_ gained speed down the runway, Vincent was once again forgotten as the howling wind found all the weak spots in the Plexiglas canopy and Cid felt his heart beat faster than the wheels of the plane as they turned on the grass. He knew the precise moment the tiny plane left the ground when his stomach dropped down into his balls and his toes curled inside his boots. A savage grin claimed his features and he let out a loud whoop as he banked the rising plane to look down at their shrinking house and equally shrinking Rocket Town. There was a moment of old melancholy as he got a glimpse of the patch of ground, still charred from the burnt rocket fuel from the Shinra Rocket No. 26. The town's namesake, now lost to the annals of time, the pages of history books and the stories left behind by old men.

Gradually, Cid's heart slowed down into the calm beats that flying brought about in him, and they seemed to echo in his chest cavity with a familiar rhythm: _Vin-cent, Vin-cent, Vin-cent_, and he banked the _Bronco II_ in the right direction to take him to the destination his heart-compass was unerringly drawing him toward. _I'm a-comin', honey_, he thought, _'n you an' me are gonna work this out once 'n for all._

And they would work it out, too. They always did. If there was one thing that Cid excelled at, it was talking, but sometimes all it took was a kiss, a touch or even just a look after some heated words or tense, chilly silence. If they could survive Meteor, his mouth and occasional unconscious ignorance, then Vincent's past would be easy, because Cid would make it known to Vincent that no matter what, he loved him…

Always.


End file.
